Those Who Slay Together
by Kristyn The Kid
Summary: Not necessarily a Claire/Alice pairing but FF doesn't give me the option of selecting three main characters. A more satisfying take on Extinction and Afterlife with a few twists along the way. You won't be disappointed. T for content, M for language.
1. Chapter 1

**I was disappointed by the ending to Resident Evil Afterlife and so I decided to change a few things, starting midway through Extinction. I don't really know why I'm posting it because it's sort of just a random mess of events within my favorite movie series but if you're bored enough to read this, I hope you like it. Rated M for language. How would you talk if the world was ending?**

**Enjoy.**

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><p>Sleep was to be treasured like gold, Claire told herself. Well, maybe not gold any longer. More like food and ammo. And gas. Sleep was to be treasured like all food and ammo and gas and all the other invaluable supplies that had suddenly become such rarities. Sleep might have been the easiest to come by for other members of the convoy but not for Claire. This was, after all, Claire Redfield's convoy. She'd heard her little tech-boy Mikey say it a million times.<p>

"This is Claire's Redfield's convoy," he'd say, "broadcasting for any survivors." He'd grip the CB radio with hope, pausing before he spoke into it again. "Broadcasting for any survivors." No response came. "Is anyone out there?" Days went by. Then weeks. Months. "Is anyone out there?" While hope diminished, Mikey's attempts did not. And every day, two or three times a day, he would broadcast, praying that there was someone, anyone, still alive.

The convoy had started with over seventy-five members. Seventy-five healthy, able-bodied, hopeful survivors who were ready to risk anything for a chance at salvation. Eight months had passed. The number was down to thirty. Sickness and starvation were responsible for a few fatalities but for the most part it was _them_. The infected, the undead, them sons-of-bitches, as known-cowboy Chase would say. The convoy had been ambushed more than once and good people had died as a result. Claire felt inevitably responsible. This was _her_ convoy. It was her job to keep these people safe. Forty-five people had been lost in just eight months. That was too damn much. She couldn't break composure, however. People looked up to her. She was still in charge of the thirty remaining survivors and therefore she had to save face. She had to remain calm and collected whenever possible. But that was hard. She was starved, both for food and for sleep. The stress of leadership was taking its toll, not that Claire would ever admit that to anyone.

Somehow, Claire had managed to find the time to sleep late one evening. Really late. According to Chase's watch, the one he'd left in her yellow Hummer, it was well after three in the morning when she caught some shuteye. Everyone else was resting. Why shouldn't she? She figured it worked the same way as a new mom. You need to sleep when the baby sleeps. So she fell asleep, uncomfortably slumped against the passenger's side window of that very same yellow Hummer. K-Mart, an unfortunately named fourteen-year-old who remained Claire's main responsibility, was asleep in the backseat. Or at least Claire thought she was.

The brave convoy leader had characteristically dozed off with her worn green hat pulled protectively over her face, keeping the bright sun of the Nevada desert out of her light eyes. She didn't notice K-Mart casually slip out the side door and look around. Apparently a noise had provoked her, a loud enough disruption to wake her from a dead sleep. K-Mart knew better than to go exploring. Even if she was simply opening the door to investigate a noise. If no one else was with her, or conscious for that matter, she was to stay in the car with Claire. For whatever reason, she decided to break the rules and take a look. This mistake would prove to be fatal. Not for her, of course. Claire would never let anything happen to K-Mart and that was probably why K-Mart had become so dependent on her.

Issues of dependency aside, the urge to take a look outside appealed to K-Mart too much to ignore and she went against what she'd been taught and pushed open the door. Slowly, as though not to attract attention, she poked her head out of the brightly-colored war vehicle. She looked around, her heavily made-up eyes seeking out anything that could have thudded against the roof of the Hummer. She turned suddenly, just in time to come face-to-face with the cause of the disruption; an almost impossibly large crow that emits an awful screech, alerting what must be thousands of other infected birds.

"Claire!" screamed a terrified K-Mart, as if the noises made by the flying hordes weren't enough to alert the sleeping leader of imminent danger. Claire entered consciousness with a violent jerk forward, fixing her hat so she could see what the hell was going on outside. She shifted to the driver's seat, K-Mart following her lead and dropping into the seat beside her. Claire was quick to grab the walkie-talkie she kept on the dashboard.

"Carlos," she addressed him, loudly and sternly. "We have to get the fuck out here."

"Way ahead of you," he answered back, putting his truck into gear and attempting to haul ass out of the campsite. The sudden and hasty rotation of tires against the sand thwarted any hopes he had of making a quick escape.

Otto, the driver of the old yellow school bus in which the children were kept, didn't hesitate to grab his own radio and contact the brave leader.

"We're in some trouble, Claire," he told her, attempting to stay calm for the sake of the children.

"Get the windows closed!" The kids all rushed to either side of the bus, pulling the thick glass up to protect the otherwise flimsy window covering. Otto tried to floor it, hoping he could blindly maneuver the bus full of innocent children to safety.

"What's wrong with them?" asked K-Mart as she watched the birds attack the sides of the Hummer.

"They're infected," she answered, putting her arm on the back of the passenger's seat and trying to back up to somewhere more secure. She was successful in her attempts to escape the initial swarm of avian-monsters but a message on her radio prevented her from moving anymore.

"We're stuck!" called Otto helplessly. She could hear the fearful cries of the children in the background.

"Shit," she said. She grabbed her gun and looked to K-Mart. "Stay here." She pulled her radio to her mouth. "Carlos, you ready?"

"Whenever you are."

"Go in three. Stay to the West. We have to get the kids off that bus and get them out of here. One…" She cracked her neck. "Two…" She cocked her gun. "Three." She kicked the Hummer door open and slammed it shut just as quickly, staying low as she pumped the flying fiends full of lead.

The infected crows were screeching, biting at the skin of whoever they could get their beaks on. Carlos and Claire raced towards the school bus, trying to work together in their accuracy. It was hard enough to shoot a slow-moving member of the human undead, let alone flesh-starved birds that seemed to fly with more ferocity and speed now that they were contaminated.

"Help!" someone screamed from behind them. Claire was too close to the bus to run to their assistance and prayed that someone, Chase or LJ or Betty, could save them.

"Over here!" Claire screamed to Mikey who was backing one of the trucks up towards the bus's fire exit. She pulled open the door of the bus while Carlos covered her, shooting whatever birds tried to go after the kids. She lifted each child to Mikey who placed them inside the truck and told them to cover their heads. The lack of youthful-flesh available to the birds seemed to exacerbate their rage. They were swooping down to get a bite out of whoever was available. That, it so happened, was just about everyone. Claire stealthily made her way back to the Hummer, emptying her clip in the crows that circled her.

"Claire!" expelled a distraught K-Mart.

"Hold on to something," Claire instructed fiercely, shooting the Hummer forward to slice the gap in the campsite. A younger woman was trying to fend off at least five of the airborne menaces and it seemed as though she could use a hand. "Open that door!" K-Mart reached back and opened the side door, grabbing the woman's hand and pulling her to safety. "Were you bit?" Claire inquired harshly. The woman, now crying, shook her head. "Get in the back with her," she told K-Mart. "Keep your heads down."

And, somewhere not-so-far away, Alice saw this. Overtop what seemed like miles upon miles of sand dunes, Alice noticed the birds. Alice, who had the power to single-handedly wipe out the entire cloud of crows with her own two hands. Alice, who had destroyed her motorcycle in her sleep the night before. Alice, who was dressed for a desert-trek, if not to pilot an aircraft. Alice, who assumed she was seeing an inordinate group of healthy birds crowding over an otherwise empty space.

When she got closer, she heard the screams. She increased her speed, overjoyed by the idea that she may have just found human life but concerned about what it was that was happening. Truth was, she _had_ found human life. It was just on its way to being devoured by birds.

Carlos hadn't been as quick to return to shelter as Claire, though he knew she only did that so could get to K-Mart. He had made a mad dash towards another woman, one he didn't know all that well but knew she didn't deserve to be made into a meal by these horrible creatures. Chase, everyone's favorite cowboy, had taken the initiative to climb atop one of the military vehicles, the one equipped with the flamethrower, and began to do just that. He began to torch those bastards, uttering some Chase-esque remark about fried chicken as he did so. He wasn't paying much attention to what was happening below him due to the high level priority of frying the sons of bitches flying around him so when he aimed the stream of combustion downwards towards a particularly stubborn group of crows, he had no idea that the young woman trying to escape them was literally in the line of fire. Back on the sand, Carlos was the second to notice the flames headed directly towards the young lady, the first being the young lady herself. He dove in front of her, pulling her to his chest and turning so his back was towards the blaze. He braced himself, preparing for the searing pain he knew he'd be experiencing in a matter of seconds. When those seconds passed and he felt nothing but a slight heat to his back, he thought to look up, and damn it all if he wasn't surprised to see Alice standing just fifteen feet from him.

She stood with her head down slightly, an intense look upon her face as if she was using ever ounce of concentration in her body to perform this task. And, in fact, she was. She used those powers, the ones that she had yet to fully identify or understand, she used them to stop the flames from engulfing the unknown young woman and Carlos, the man she had known in what felt like a past life. She stood there, breathing somewhat heavy and grinding her teeth as she stared intensely, mysteriously stopping the fire in its tracks and sparing the lives of two innocent people. Doing so directed the blaze up, creating a massive explosion overhead and setting fire to all of the remaining birds and raining a good deal of ash, debris and flaming feathers down to the barren earth below. The intense heat blew back her short hair, causing her eyes to water and her face to be illuminated by an orange glow.

"Holy shit," said Claire from behind the wheel of the Hummer, inching forward in her seat and looking out the windshield with difficulty. She had a hard time believing what she was seeing; a fireball suddenly stopped by the sheer mind-power of a woman no larger than herself. Her voice lowered as she realized she was really just talking to herself. "How the fuck did she just do that?"

When the flames were gone, so was the young woman, running out of both relief and fear. Alice stood, barely, dizzy from the mental exertion and panting with what sounded like grunts of victory. Carlos rushed to her, able to make it there in time to catch her fatigued body. They stayed there a minute, both of them basking in the feeling of the other's arms despite the ash still falling from the sky above them.

When Carlos felt like she could stand on her own, he released her, reluctantly.

"What are you doing here, Alice?" he asked, his voice raspy with adrenaline.

"I saw the birds," she answered him. God, he missed that voice. That constant whisper. "I heard the screams when I got a little closer." She looked up at him with a familiar half-smile. "It looked like you needed my help so I decided to intervene." He couldn't keep himself from grinning at her words as well as the expression with which she said them. Behind them, quiet conversations could be heard, accusatory and bewildered whispers from the people who had now dared to emerge from the safety of their vehicles. Even Claire had opened the door to the Hummer, standing with her feet on the floor of the driver's seat so she could rest one hand on the open door and one on the car's yellow roof to get a clearer look of the woman of the hour. "They're talking about me," Alice admitted earnestly, looking to the sand beneath her boots. Carlos looked over his shoulder, taking in the same sight as his prevailing companion.

"Let's take a walk," he said, putting a hand on her shoulder.


	2. Chapter 2

"Let's take a walk."

Carlos guided her to a more isolated part of the makeshift campsite. It was behind one of the gas station's fixtures, the gas station they'd stopped out in hopes to fuel up but found barely any gasoline within it.

"What have you been doing?" he asked, unable to contain his curiosity. "Where have you been?" Alice refused to make eye-contact with him during his interview. "It's been eight months, Alice." Images from the time during which they knew each other, the first night mainly, flashed through her mind. She closed her eyes, tilting her head slightly as she willed the pictures to leave her.

"I've been everywhere," she answered with a breath. "After Umbrella…" her voice faded. She licked her lips and looked to him almost sadly. "I just tried to stay away from people. It's better if I'm on my own."

"So what did you do?" he continued. "How did you get around?"

"Well I used to have a motorcycle," she said with a hint of a laugh. "I just migrated around, killing as many of those monsters as I could. Now I'm here." Carlos exhaled, letting his broad shoulders drop.

"But what about Jill and Angie and-"

"Don't," begged Alice, raising her hand slightly to silence him. She grimaced when he spoke their names, feeling the familiar pain in her stomach. "Let's not talk about them. Let's not talk about anything from back then." She inhaled deeply, looking past him to one of the children who was hiding behind an RV to get a look at her. She waved and he sunk back out of sight. That just further proved her point. She returned her gaze to Carlos. "When I think about that and how things were eight months ago…" she shook her head, "it reminds me of how I failed them." Her voice trailed off, breaking a little towards the end as she let some of her most painful memories show themselves in her tone. Her eyes darted away for a moment but were filled with tears when she returned them to him. "How I failed you."

Carlos looked to her with sympathy, completely taken aback by the sudden display of vulnerability. He put a strong hand on her shoulder.

"Hey," he said sternly, "you didn't fail me." Alice looked as if she was going to speak again but he didn't pause long enough to let her. "And even if you did," he began, a sly smile spreading across his tanned face, "I think you just made up for it with that little fire trick there." Alice laughed through her tears and Carlos could do nothing else but follow suit.

"I've missed you, Carlos," she admitted quietly, a begrudging confession that she would have kept to herself if it hadn't been burning at her throat.

"I've missed you too," he responded just as quietly, and with that, he pulled her to his chest, a hand on the back of her head that held her to him. She wrapped her arms around him, hoping no one in the camp was looking. She would rather be regarded as the frightening creature that could stop fire with her mind than have people look to her affectionately. Well, except for Carlos.

A second later, a third party stepped onto the stage, approaching slowly as not to interrupt an obviously tender moment. Claire cleared her throat when she was within earshot. Alice snapped back, straightening her posture and wiping a tear under the guise of rubbing her eye.

"Hi," Claire greeted, an uncharacteristic meekness in her voice. She extended a gloved hand to the admittedly intimidating stranger. Alice hesitated but soon enough accepted the friendly gesture and shook the slender woman's hand.

"Alice," Carlos began with a gesture in Claire's direction, "this is Claire Redfield. This is her convoy." Alice nodded, a single bob of her head that conveyed acknowledgment.

"What you did before," Claire began once she released Alice's hand.

"I'm sorry about that," Alice interrupted. "I didn't mean to scare anyone." The same child who had been staring at her from behind the RV was back in position, only now he'd brought two friends along to enjoy the show.

"No, no, please" Claire interrupted, "I wanted to thank you on behalf of the entire convoy. There's a good chance we wouldn't have survived that if it wasn't for you. We're all extremely grateful." Alice scoffed. She didn't mean to but her extended lack of human-contact had all but evaporated her filter.

"Yeah, but how long am I going to stay?" she asked impatiently.

"They're scared," Claire disclosed with a nod. "They're not sure about what they saw and that uncertainty is scares them." Alice did all she could not to frown.

"Yeah," she nodded, "that's what I thought."

"But you helped us," Claire went on. "You helped us and that means we'll help you. You're welcome to join the convoy. You can ride with me and K-Mart." When Alice's skeptical expression didn't change, Claire continued. "You went out of your way to save the lives of two perfect strangers. No matter how you did it, that's worth something."

"Well, they weren't both perfect strangers," said Alice, looking to Carlos.

"You two know each other?" Claire questioned. She got her answer when neither of them broke their gaze to respond. "I figured as much." Alice turned away from Carlos and nodded. "Before the world ended?"

"Something like that," said Carlos slyly. "We met in Raccoon City. The original danger zone." Claire's face changed as a jab of painful familiarity got her in the chest. Her grimace was clear enough to get the attention of both Alice and Carlos. "Something wrong?"

"No," Claire lied, fighting the waves of aching remembrance that were ailing her. "Not at all." Alice picked up on this in a much greater way than Carlos. She wondered if perhaps her people skills were also heightened by Umbrella's experiments. "I just knew someone in Raccoon City." She shook her head before adding, "A long, long time ago."

"Who?" Carlos asked. Claire's face didn't change, still reflecting an obvious amount of affliction. "It must have been a long time ago if Raccoon City was still up and running."

"Leave her be," Alice whispered to the man beside her. The amount of pain within Claire Redfield was quite clear and Alice didn't want to see it intensify. She swiftly changed the subject. "It's a nice convoy you got here," she said, scanning the campsite full of large vehicles and curious onlookers. "You mind showing me around? You know, if I'm going to stick with you guys for a little while." Claire nodded, releasing the pained breath she'd been storing within her chest.

"Of course," she said graciously, motioning for Alice to follow her as she headed off towards the rest of the camp. Carlos stayed behind, watching the two of them walk away. Alice peered over her shoulder, getting one last glance of her long-lost friend before continuing with the convoy leader.

The first stop on the Claire Redfield convoy tour was the truck of a rather esteemed member of the group.

"Chase," greeted Claire with a smile.

"Well hello, Claire," he answered. He was in the bed of his truck, checking ammo and taking inventory as was one of the duties assigned to him. He looked up when he realized Claire wasn't alone. When he noticed who the woman beside her was, he removed his hat out of respect and extended a powerful hand. "Ma'am," he said courteously. Alice glanced at Claire as if looking for confirmation before shaking his hand in return. "Thanks for your help back there. If you didn't come walking by when you did, we'd all been screwed."

"Chase," repeated Claire, "this is Alice. She's going to be joining us."

"Happy to have you on board, ma'am."

"Chase is our cowboy," explained the brunette. "He's the tough guy on board." Chase tipped his hat again, adding a wink to flourish the compliment. 'If you ever need anything and I'm not around, Chase here's your guy."

"Don't flatter me, Claire," he answered coolly.

The next vehicle belonged to another familiar face, a Mr. Lloyd Jefferson Wade.

"Hey!" cried LJ when the ladies approached the tricked out ambulance. "I remember you! Raccoon City, right?" Alice inhaled deeply, smiling a little as the memory of the man washed over her.

"LJ, right?"

"Yeah!" exclaimed an overly-animated LJ. God, he was just as eccentric as she'd remembered. The attractive woman beside him, a dark-skinned woman with slicked back hair and a sash of bullets, listened intently, almost appearing intimidated.

"You know LJ, too?" Claire asked.

"What can I say," Alice shrugged, half-joking. "I was a social butterfly."

"Aw, Betty, you've got to meet this girl. I've never met someone as hardcore as this lady right here." She allowed herself to laugh.

"Pleasure to make your acquaintance," Betty said with a smile, offering another handshake. "LJ seems to think very highly of you."

"You don't even know the kind of crazy ninja things this girl can do, man," he continued.

"Well, we got a taste of that with that fire thing," added Betty. "Thanks for that."

"Happy to help," Alice said with a nod. She looked to Claire imploringly. She wanted to move on to the next group of people, the next select few who would obligatorily shake her hand and force out a 'thank you' for her mind trick. Claire picked up on this and led her to the next van.

"Alice, meet Mikey," Claire said, pointing inside the van of computers to the shaggy-haired blonde in the chair. "He's my little tech-geek."

"Hey," said Mikey, leaning out of his chair enough to reach Alice's small hand. "It's nice to meet you, Alice." She forced a smile and nodded. "Pretty neat trick you had back there. Mind teaching me that?" She mustered up another polite laugh.

"I would if I could."

After making their way around the entire campsite, Claire showed Alice to the infamous yellow Hummer.

"Last but not least," began Claire, "this one is mine." She knocked on the window of the truck, alerting the small person inside. K-Mart appeared a moment later. "K-Mart, I'd like you to meet Alice. She's going to be bunking with us for a while." K-Mart stayed where she was, staring a little, probably in shock to be face-to-face with the person who she'd seen stop fire with their bare hands.

"Hi," Alice greeted sweetly.

"Hi," K-Mart said eventually.

"Sorry," Alice apologized, "if I scared you before." K-Mart's face turned red.

"Don't be," she said after a moment. "You saved Carlos. And Elizabeth." She shook her head as if trying to reset her train of thought. "That was really cool of you." Alice's smile was sincere for the first time in many introductions.

"You sure you have room for me?" Alice asked, peeking inside the Hummer.

"It's got three rows of seating," answered the leader. "Plenty of room for all of us." Alice licked her lips again and nodded, almost unwilling to accept what seemed like charity from this confident stranger. She swallowed her unreasonable pride, knowing that without her precious motorcycle she was probably in for some trouble anyway. At least here she could regroup until she found a way to return to her lonesome lifestyle.

Across the camp, Carlos sat atop one of the motor homes, pretending to be scanning the perimeter when really he was admiring the woman whose legend and memory had haunted him for the last eight months. He was mesmerized. There had always been this hypnotic quality about her. Ever since the moment they met, two strangers trying to survive pure mayhem together, he was entranced.

Part of it came from the way she spoke. The voice had been stuck in his head since the last words she'd spoken to him. That sultry sort of whisper, the throaty, breathy tone of voice that seemed to wrap each and every word with a unique heat. She was intelligent. That much was clear in the way she'd led the group out of Raccoon City. She had no trouble speaking her intellect, showing the wisdom that was within her and proving just how capable she really was. He didn't care if Umbrella made her that way; he was completely infatuated with her wit and mentality.

One thing for which he knew Umbrella was not responsible was her looks. If her intelligence was what drew him to her, her looks made damn sure that he'd never go astray. It was a combination of things that attracted him. Perhaps it was the way she carried herself, the constant air of seduction that followed her around like a cloud of temptation. Her crystal blue eyes, taunting whenever they looked in his direction, seemed as if they could pierce his soul and read his mind, viewing every last erotic thought he'd had about her since that first night in Raccoon City. He watched her lips when she spoke, the intoxicatingly full lips that he imagined were so soft but never had the audacity to find out. Her clothes back in the Arklay Mountain city hadn't been as revealing as, say, Jill Valentine's but her outfit revealed just enough to give him an idea of what he was missing; toned arms, long legs and a tantalizingly flat stomach. Her current outfit was even less-revealing, though it did give him uniquely clear view of her thighs. But it didn't matter. He knew what was there. There are some things a man can never forget.

His trance was broken when the beautiful women approached the trailer. He yelled down for her to stay where she was and hastily climbed down the side.

"So it looks like I'm going to be staying here for a little while," she told him. "At least until I can find a new motorcycle." His heart sped up as the idea of spending his days with Alice entered his mind.

"That's good to hear," he agreed, trying to hide how eager he actually was.

"Maybe I can teach you a few moves in the meantime," she teased. "You know, so you don't get your ass kicked by the birds again." He laughed as he watched her walk away, walking off towards the Hummer that she now called home. For as much as some things had changed in the last eight months, Carlos thought to himself, some things stayed exactly the same.


End file.
